Homosexual Prisoners Suffer Abuse and Discrimination / Frank E. Carranza Lopez in the blog of Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada

By Frank E. Carranza Lopez, Agencia Decoro

(www.miscelaneasdecuba.net) — The alarming news came to us from Fausto de la Caridad Urbay, President of the LGBT Liberal Youth of Cuba Front.

He is denied visits to gay prisoners at the HIV/AIDS special prison, located a mile from the Maraguaco highway to San Jose de las Lajas in the province Mayabeque. This prison has 5 internal sections, four for men and one for women.

On 2 August 2013, he went to Section #2, medium security (the most populous of the prison) to visit for four hours with family and friends of the inmates. For years inmates have enjoyed this privilege without hindrance. Most inmates are gay and along with visits from their family receive visits from their respective partners.

Imagine the astonishment of the visitors when, after waiting some hours for official entry, they were told that by superior orders only family members could visit and no one else. The discontent caused quite a commotion, followed by crude threats from the officials of internal order (FOI), to which the families responded by asking to see the director of the penitentiary, Jorge Luis Castillo. He did not show his face and instead sent his second in command, who called himself Álvaro, and who, upset and disrespectful to the gay community, told them, and I quote, “Castillo is Castillo and I’m me and I don’t care to allow gay partners to visit here and if you don’t like it you can complain as much as or wherever you want and it won’t do you any good, I’m in charge here.”

After several minutes of protest, he decided to pass on the food the visitors had brought, warning that this would be the last time and not to take the trouble of returning.

Many of those prisoners are of the type called charity cases (with no family), and only receive visits from their homosexual partners.

Currently the discontent within the facility is growing, daily irritation increases, after the surprise inspection of high officials from the Cuban Interior Ministry (MININT) triggered by a complaint issued on June 27 by CUBANET, any return of the previous visitors makes things worse.

The repression increased, the food returned to its original inedible and indescribable state, vitamin K disappeared again along with injectable Dipirona, and as if that weren’t enough it seems the deputy director of the prison, Señor Álvaro, carried out a coup d’etat against his superior and won, playing the part of the Grim Reaper with the threads of the lives of the inmates who require specialized care given their state as patients with HIV/AIDS.

10 August 2013